Country: RWANDA
Region: Nyamagabe District, Kamageri Sector, Southern Province
Owner: Buf Café
Altitude: 1,800-2,000 metres above sea level
Variety: 100% Red Bourbon
Processing: Fully Washed and sun-dried on African raised beds.
Buf Awards: Cup of Excellence 2008, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015

Malic acidity, green apples, citrus and stone fruit predominate. Floral, elegant, sweet and clean.

About Nyarusiza Kawanziza (with thanks to Melbourne Coffee Merchants)

This coffee was produced by 43 smallholder producers who farm coffee in the high hills surrounding Remera washing station, located in the Kamageri Sector of Nyamagabe District, in Rwanda’s Southern Province. The farmers are members of the Kawanziza Farmer’s Group, a small association of producers who deliver coffee to Buf Coffee company, who own and manage Nyarusiza along with three other washing stations.

Most washing stations in Rwanda receive cherry from hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of farmers who own very small plots of land. Separation of such tiny lots is expensive and impractical, so the large majority of coffees are processed as a mixed lot from multiple producers. Typically, lots are separated as day lots (ie. cherries that were all picked on the same day) rather than by a single farm or producer group.

The farmers who make up the Kawanziza group come from a nearby village called Gasaka. Recently they banded together and made the decision to process and market their coffees separately as a smaller, more selected lot. The group also provide each other with invaluable support, by sharing resources and labour during the busy harvest period. They named their association Kawanziza, which roughly translates to ‘beautiful coffee’ in the local Kinyarwanda language.

To distinguish their coffee and ensure it is processed separately, the producers have organised to deliver cherry to the washing station on certain days of the week. Selling their coffee as a separate lot allows them to directly benefit from any higher prices paid specifically for their coffees (rather than these profits being shared equally amongst all contributing producers) and results in a higher income to support their families. This creates an effective incentive for the farmers to work as a collective towards achieving the very best quality, and we think the results are evident in the complex and clean profile of their coffee!

ABOUT NYARUSIZA WASHING STATION

This coffee was processed at Nyarusiza washing station, which was established in 2003 and is the first Buf’s washing stations, servicing about 700 local producers. The washing station sits at 1,743 meters above sea level in the high, rugged mountains of Rwanda’s Southern Province. The area surrounding the washing station has mineral-rich soil and a lush environment that is well suited to specialty coffee production.

Quality control and day-to-day operations at Nyarusiza are overseen by the station manager, Celestine Uwizeyimana, who is assisted by Head of Quality Control, Eugenie Kanakuze. Together, they ensure that the coffee is harvested and processed with care and that production standards are kept at the highest possible level. Nyarusiza provides jobs for 60 people during the peak harvest and staffs five permanent positions. At the end of each season, any surplus profits are shared with the producers and washing station managers.

Typically, farms in Nyamagabe District are very small – averaging around a hectare (or 300-600 trees) – and are situated between 1,800 to 2,000 meters above sea level. Coffee is grown as a cash crop, alongside subsistence food crops like maize, beans and sorghum and some livestock like goats and chickens. Cows are also an important asset to a farming family. Besides having practical advantages – like providing milk and yoghurt to feed the family, producing excellent manure for the coffee farms, and being an opportunity for additional income – they are also a traditional symbol of wealth and status in Rwanda.

ABOUT BUF COFFEE

Buf Coffee was founded in 2000 by Epiphanie Mukashyaka, a pioneering businesswoman and a source of inspiration to countless other female entrepreneurs in Rwanda’s coffee community, and beyond. Buf is owned and operated by Mukashyaka – known to all as Ephiphanie – and her son, Samuel Muhirwa, who has taken an active role in the day to day operations of the business. The word ‘Buf’ is derived from ‘Bufundu’ and refers to the former name of the region in which all of their washing stations are located.

Epiphanie’s story is one of great resilience and fortitude. After losing her husband and a child during the horrific 1994 genocide, Epiphanie was faced with the responsibility of independently caring for and rebuilding a life for her seven surviving children.  With limited education and little money or support, Epiphanie – whose husband was a coffee farmer – decided to focus on coffee as a means to a better and more stable livelihood. By participating in the USAID-financed program, Partnership for Enhancing Agriculture in Rwanda through Linkages (PEARL), Epiphanie began to learn more about specialty coffee propagation and processing. This transformational program aimed at switching the focus of Rwandan coffee production to quality, rather than quantity, and thereby ending reliance on the notoriously volatile coffee commodity market. Rather, farmers were given access to far higher-earning specialty coffee market. The program and its successor, Sustaining Partnerships to Enhance Rural Enterprise and Agribusiness Development (SPREAD), have been invaluable in helping in assisting Rwanda’s small scale coffee farmers to rebuild their production in the wake of the genocide, and the world coffee crash of the 1990’s.

Using the knowledge and resources she gained through PEARL, along with a small loan from the Rwandan Development Bank, Epiphanie was able to establish Buf Coffee in 2000, and purchased their first washing station – Nyarusiza – in 2003. She was the first woman to own a private coffee company and to establish a washing station in Rwanda. As Epiphanie says, “I came up with the idea to build this, and nothing was going to stop me.” Nyarusiza was followed by Remera in 2007 and now the family also own two other washing stations, Umurage and Ubumwe.

Before the proliferation of cooperatives and centralised washing stations in Rwanda, small farmers sold semi-processed cherries on to a middleman, and the market was dominated by a single exporter. This commodity-focused system – coupled with declining world prices in the 1990s – brought severe hardship to farmers, some of whom abandoned coffee entirely.

Today, it’s a different story. From the beginning, Epiphanie’s goal has been to produce high quality, specialty-focused coffees by improving farming and processing practices and maintaining high standards at each of her washing stations. In doing so, she has been instrumental in shifting the focus of the Rwandan coffee industry from producing high quantity, commercial lots, to more specialised, high-quality lots. As a result, the farmers that sell coffee cherry to Buf’s washing stations have benefited directly through increased income, and also indirectly through the access to important community resources like safe water and electricity, which have been brought to their villages via the establishment of the washing stations.

Buf Coffee buys cherry from over 7,000 smallholder farmers in Nyamagabe and Huye Districts of Rwanda’s Southern Province. The company has strong links with the local communities around their washing stations and provide hundreds of jobs during peak harvest (May-July) as well as nearly 50 permanent positions year-round.

 Epiphanie and Sam care deeply about the communities they work with. Outside of providing economic opportunities, Buf has initiated many social projects that support farmers in improving their and their family’s quality of life. In 2018 Buf partnered with the Rwandan Government’s One Cow per Poor Family program to distribute 500 cows across organised farmer groups within their supply chain over a five year period. Farmer groups nominate the member that should receive the cow with an expectation that the cow will eventually be bred, and its calves gifted to other members in the same group, creating a positive and ongoing ripple effect within the community.

Besides practical advantages like being an opportunity for additional income and providing dairy to feed the family and excellent manure for the coffee farms, cows are also a traditional symbol of wealth and status in Rwanda. By gifting a family with a cow Buf is not only providing farmers with a source of nutrition and alternative income to coffee, it also reinstates a sense of pride to the household (which most likely suffered devastating effects from the genocide).

In February of 2019 Buf opened a kindergarten next to Nyarusiza coffee washing station to service the children of local coffee farmers and washing station workers. While school is compulsory in Rwanda, kindergarten is not, and Sam noticed that many families weren’t able to work and supervise their small children during the busy coffee season. In partnership with Swedish coffee company Selector Coffee, Buf was able to open Umuvumu Kindergarten, which now has over 150 students aged between 3–6 years old. The children attend kindergarten from 7.30 am–12 pm, allowing their parents to put in a full morning’s work in the field or at Nyarusiza before picking them up. Tuition is free and the kids are currently provided with breakfast and will also be given lunch once the kitchen building and dining hall have been completed.

HOW COFFEE IS PROCESSED BY BUF COFFEE

• The ripe cherries are picked by hand and then delivered to the washing station either on foot, by bike, or by trucks that pick up cherries from various pick-up points in the area.
• Before being pulped, the cherries are deposited into flotation tanks, where a net is used to skim off the floaters (less dense, lower grade cherries). The heavier cherries are then pulped the same day using a mechanical pulper that divides the beans into three grades by weight.
• The beans (in parchment) are then dry-fermented (in a tank with no added water) overnight for 8–12 hours. They are then sorted again using grading channels; water is sent through the channels and the lighter (i.e. lower grade) beans are washed to the bottom, while the heavier cherries remain at the top of the channel.
• The wet parchment is then soaked in water for around 24 hours, before being moved to pre-drying beds where they are intensively sorted for around six hours. This step is always done while the beans are still damp because the green (unripe) beans are easier to see. It is also always done in the shade to protect the beans from direct sunlight (which they have found helps to keep the parchment intact and therefore protects the bean better).
• The sorted beans are finally moved onto raised African drying beds in the direct sun to dry slowly over 10–20 days. During this time the coffee is sorted carefully for defects and turned regularly to ensure the coffee dries evenly. It is also covered in the middle of the day when the sun is at its hottest.
• Once at 11–12% humidity, the coffee (still in its parchment) is stored in the washing station’s warehouse in carefully labelled lots until it is ready for export. The coffee is then sent to Buf’s brand new dry mill, Ubumwe (built 2017), to be dry-milled. Here the parchment is removed, and the beans are sorted again by hand and using machinery to remove any physical defects. This is done under the watchful eye of Edouine Mugisha, who has worked with Buf since 2011. Having control over the milling of the coffee means that Buf has greater control over the quality of sorting and processing from cherry delivery right through to export.

WHY WE LOVE IT

We have been working with Buf Coffee since 2009, and we feel privileged to work with such a dynamic, passionate, and committed family in Rwanda. This is the first time we have had the opportunity to buy coffee from the Kawanziza Farmers’ Group, and we are excited to support this community of growers from the Gasaka Village. We love the crisp green apple and lemon acidity of this coffee, balanced with cane sugar sweetness and a juicy mouthfeel.